Why?


    I’m not sure what inspired this idea but I’ve been kicking it around in my head now for well over a dozen years.  Mostly I’ve just fantasized a lot about driving.

    In one vision I’m driving a wood paneled station wagon toward a lonely country intersection.  At the last possible moment I take a hard 90 degree turn left, the hubcaps leave the tires like they’re scared.  Coming out of my fish tail I speed on as the hubcaps slow their roll and gingerly rest on a dirt roadside where one day a hitchhiker walks past and wonders how they got there.

    I also see myself in some city.  I park my battered Plymouth K car in one of those No Parking Zones that just shouldn’t be.  A cop demands I move the car immediately or it’s going to be towed.  I toss him the keys and walk away.
  

    Another one simply has me driving an El Camino off a pier into the Atlantic Ocean.  There’s a lot of those scenes in my head.

    I guess the idea to me has always held a kind of promise to be unencumbered and reckless.  Driving a dying car can be stressful but it can also be liberating.  I think when Janis Joplin sang, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” she was talking about a guy with a chip on his shoulder, driving a wreck.  I want to be that guy for a while.

    Fantasy is nice, but why actually do this?  There are a few reasons. 

    For one thing I think now is the right time to get a read on the U.S.A.  Personally, I don’t believe one year in history is more important than another.  After all, if 2008 is so important it must mean that something pretty important went down in 2007.  See where I’m going?  But this year does seem noteworthy.  The Presidential campaign, the economy, world politics - Americans are at one of those points we come to every few decades where we really aren’t sure of who we are and who we want to be.  I sense an insecurity among us, about our status in the world as the “superpower.”   We seem to be recognizing for the first time the limits of our own power – economic and military - and even the limits of the world’s resources.  I’d like to see where this impression leads me. 

    As for the cars, you should understand that I know nothing about them.  I don’t spend my Saturday’s under the hood of some t-top.  I’ve never done anything on my car more elaborate than change the oil and the tires.  But I’m a sentimental fool who grows attached to inanimate objects, none more so than my cars.  A car to me is like a part of the family.  I’ve never sold one – I’ve only donated their remains after they’ve passed on.  And while I’m often irritated or enraged when I’m behind the wheel I also have very vivid memories of happiness while simply driving.  Sometimes it’s been because of where I was driving to or driving from, but sometimes it was just because I was driving.  Strange but true. 

    I’m aware that this trip is happening because of something I’m going through and while I want to avoid at all costs the appearance that I’ve created a website to tell the world how interesting I am, it seems dishonest to avoid everything about my own personal life.  As I’ve noted with the books I’ve introduced in the Books of Interest section, the personal reasons an author has for taking his journey tell a lot about the way the whole thing rolls out.  So, what about me?

    Well, for some time now I’ve lived everyday with the thought that I’ve completely fucked up my life.  I haven’t committed a terrible crime or hurt anyone; I haven’t fried my brain or destroyed my body.  My life isn’t terrible and I have plenty to be thankful for.  Still, I just feel I’ve blown it.

    Part of this is a function of age I’m sure.  After all I’ve spent a good deal of my life worrying I’d fuck it up.  Now that I’m spending my time thinking I have indeed fucked up my life – well, I don’t know that I’d call it maturity but it’s a kind of progress that indicates moving from one stage of life to another, eh?  I’m 34 years old and I suppose this is a time many begin to get a view of where they are in relationship to where they’ve been.  The course has a feeling that it’s been set.  For me though the view isn’t a whole lot different than it was some years earlier.  I don’t have a wife or children.  My career has maintained the risk and achieved none of the gain.  My small apartment is furnished the way any 19 year old would furnish his apartment, minus the sweet sound system. 

   
I’ve been in ruts before.  In the past though I’ve been like a car stuck in the mud.  Often times I’d pin the accelerator to the floor and get myself deeper and deeper into the muck.  Lately though my “stuckness” has been more passive – like a car on the roadside just waiting for the tow.  There’s no momentum in my life, nothing carrying me to the next challenge, adventure, or love.  In other words, the tow ain’t coming.  I know if I continue on this way I’ll eventually die a sad, lonely, and unfulfilled man. 

    Like most people who set out on a journey of one kind or another, I’m looking for salvation somewhere.  Chances are I won’t find it completely, but I may find a new path.  If not I hope I’ll at least have a compelling answer to the dreaded question, “what have you been up to?”  And of course that answer is, “Breaking Down in America.”   



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CAUTION! Cars Flying Off Pier